Hard disk ends life

R

RML

Guest
Well, it has happened! My external 80 GB hard disk of less than 1 year old has given the ghost.

Friday I had editted and saved most of the scans. Turning them from TIF-files to JPG-files saves about 90-95% of disk space.

Saturday I transferred many of them to my laptop's hard disk. I couldn't do allof them because my laptop's hard disk was getting full.

I was hoping the external disk would survive a few more days. But yesterday I couldn't get it to work much anymore and was only able to transfer another 150 MB.

This morning, stubbornly refusing to accept defeat, I tried again to get it to work but no avail.

Just after noon I went to a nearby computer shop. The salesman knows a "repairman" who's willing to take a look at the disk and try to get the data off. The initial 30 euro he's asking is just about what I'm willing to pay to get my scans back.

I really hope I can get the scans back. I'd hate to scan 20-25 films again. I'm seriously bummed out right now. :bang:

Anyway, as soon as I've returned from my well-deserved holiday in Mongolia some time in late November, and as soon as the credit card is paid off, I'm going to get 2 external hard disks (both small, perhaps only 20 GB each, and thus cheap). And I'm going to invest in a DVD burner. I guess I'll treat myself to some expensive Xmas presents. :)
 
At least you still have the negs. Imagine what would have happened if you only shot digital... Lucky us for being so old-fashioned :)
 
Is the circuit board fried or is it mechanical? At work we saved a disk by transplanting the circuit board from a good disk to a bad one.
 
As brian said. It could be possible. :)Or, you can freeze your disk and maybe it'll work for a little while:)

Finally, don't forget to send it back to the factory; should still have warranty being less than 1y old. For 10euro shipping costs, i got a new one from maxtor (newer version too).
 
RML, sure sorry to hear of your loss. I would try what Pherdinand said about freezing it, or Brian's suggestion of changing out the circuit board if you can. Does it not spin up at all, or just sit there making funny noises and refuse to give you the time of day?
 
funny, one of my HDs died the other day too. nothing important lost though, it was my old pc .
But hmmm.. must back up my files!!
 
The disk was spinning as usual but I think the read head arm was not working properly; it made clicking noises. Anyway, it's now away for data retrieval, and I hope that'll do the trick.

I definitely send it to Maxtor! But I'll treat the replacement disk as an extra backup. I'm thinking about a "fool proof" backup system consisting of 2 small disks (both say 20-40GB) that I want to be eachother's mirrors. The replacement disk would end up as a third mirror disk that I'll keep safe at my parents' house.

I'll also get a DVD burner so I can burn some DVDs that I can keep safe with my wife, at work, or elsewhere. It'll be a few weeks before I'll be able to buy and implement all this. And than I have to force myself to make a backup at least once a week.

It'll be quite some work but I'll be damned I'll go through all this hassle and aggrevation again.
 
Woohoo! I got my scans back! And I didn't even have to rescan the negs for it.

My "repairman" explained that those plastic casings are not doing a very good job at carrying off the heat produced by the hard disk inside. This seems to have caused some sort of electrical problem (don't ask me what, I'm not an expert). Anyway, he fixed the problem somehow long enough so he was able to transfer all the data onto another hard disk.

I bought a new Maxtor OneTouch 80 GB external hard disk, and my data is now back online! I'm soooooo pleased now! :)
 
Congratulations Remy! :) Your idea of burning to CD-R is a good one. You should get a read/write drive that has excellent MTBF (mean time between failure) and low error rates, because you want a drive that will still be working in 5 years time. Hewlett-Packard and Plextor make excellent drives.

Then, don't burn to any old CD. Do not use re-writable CDs either. Get archival quality media such as the Mitsui Gold Archive CD-R.

Then you will have reliable back-ups.
 
Peter, you're absolutely right. Mitsui cd's are very good. But as I have 5.5 GB of scans I need bigger capacity (I don't fancy having to burn 9-10 cd's each time). So if you have any recommendations for archival dvd's, please let me know.

Anyway, I'll get myself another of these OneTouch external disks in a few months time (when my finances are back on track) so I have a duplicate of all my scans. Combined with a duplicate on dvd (kept at a safe place) I should be fairly confident I won't loose my precious photos anymore.

I seriously recommend anyone to follow at least some sort of backup strategy. You have no idea how annoying and depressing the loss of my scans was to me, and I hope none of you will ever have to go through the same experience.

I was lucky the "old" (11 months old) hard disk wasn't destroyed or the data corrupted and that my photos could be retrieved. Next time I may not be so lucky....
 
BTW, the OneTouch comes with Dantz Retrospect Expres backup software. As a professional expert in this field of data backup and restore I work daily with much more sophisticated enterprise software (Tivoli Storage Manager backing up data on ESS storage cabinets in a seperate IP network dedicated for backups, connected with several thousands of AIX, Sun and Windows servers, which are connected to an extensive double SAN, connected to EMC storage cabinets), which is waaaay to extensive for a home user. The Retrospect software gives me just what I need as a home user and is very easy to use. If you have a copy lying about you might want to give it a spin. And no, I don't get any money or benefits from Dantz. :)
 
Remy, completely agree about Dantz Retrospect (I don't work for them either, or Mitsui for that matter :) ). I have the Retrospect Workgroup edition and it is really excellent! Would be very suitable for a small business. On to DVD...

There are currently no gold DVD-R disks available from any manufacturer. However Mitsui does make a high quality real silver disk using the same phthalocyanine dye technology that is used on the gold CD-Rs. (Many "silver" disks are actually aluminium.) If stored properly these DVD-Rs should last for about 75 years. Recommended:

Mitsui Advanced Media DVD-R
 
Stu, how cheap was that setup? The devices I've seen cost over $3000, which I hardly call cheap. Neither are SCSI disks. And I have never seen any cheap software that let's me use RAID 1 over 2 external USB drives under WinXP.

Please enlighten me. I would consider using RAID 1 if I could implement it easily, cheaply, and without having to invest even more in hardware.
 
I think RAID is a really expensive solution for an individual - and RAID arrays have been known to fail too...

It's interesting that we're having this conversation given that we're analog guys.

My image backup system is in a shoebox - film! :)
 
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